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INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACY 



AN ADDRESS 

Delivered at the Annual Commencement of the Pennsylvania 

Museum and School of Industrial Art^ in 

Horticultural Hall, Philadelphia, 

June 9, J 898 



BY 

Hon. ALBERT CLARKE 

Secretary of tlie Home Market Club, 
of Boston 



M, 



PHILADELPHIA 
PUBLISHED BY THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES 



Gift 



INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACY 



AN ADDRESS 

Delivered at the Annual Commencement of the Pennsylvania 

Museum and School of Industrial Art> in 

Horticultural Hall, Philadelphia, 

June 9, J 898 



BY 

Hon. ALBERT CLARKE 

Secretary of the Home Market Club, 
of Boston 



M 



PHILADELPHIA 
PUBLISHED BY THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES 



^^,1 



6 



THE SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL ART, 

now in its twenty-second year, having buildings valued at about $800,000 
and equipment valued at more than $200,000, comprises in its organiza- 
tion the following Departments : 

School of Drawing. 

School of Textile Design and Manufacture. 

School of Decorative Painting. 

School of Chemistry and Dyeing. 

School of Applied Design. 

School of Carving and Wood-Work. 

School of Decorative Sculpture. 

School of Architectural Design. 

School of Interior Decoration. 

School of Illustration. 

School of Normal Art Instruction. 

School of Modern Languages. 

STAFF. 
L. W. Miller, Principal. 

Howard Fremont Stratton, Director of Art School. 
E, W. France, Director of Textile School. 
Charles E. Dana, Professor of Water-Color Painting. 
Herman Deigendesch, Professor of Drawing. 
Paul Lachenmeyer, Professor of Sculpture, 
Frederic Haigh, Professor of Chemistry. 
Bradley C. Algeo, Assistant Director of Textile School and Instructor 

in Textile Design and Mechanical Drawing. 
A. M. Grillon, Director of School of Modern Languages and Instructor 

in French. 
A. M. Schmidt-Grillon, Instructor in German. 
Florence C. Fetherston, Instructor in Design Applied to Printed 

Fabrics. 
William Laird Turner, Instructor in Design Applied to Woven Fabrics. 
Samuel Thompson, Instructor in Carving and Wood-Work. 
William Roebuck, Instructor in Weaving and Related Branches. 
James P. Jamieson, Instructor in Architectural Drawing and Design. 
Helen A, Fox, Instructor in Instrumental Drawing and Historical 

Ornament. 
Elisabeth M. Hallowell, Instructor in Illustration. 
Charles N. Butler, C.E., Lecturer on Patent Laws. 
J. M. Woelfel, Instructor in Dyeing. 

Joseph H. Shinn, Jr., Instructor in Design Applied to Textiles. 
John F. Scott, Instructor in Carding and Spinning. 
Frances Louise Farrand, Instructor in Elementary Drawing and 

Design. 
Ferdinand Lazzaro Marenzana, Instructor in Drawing. 
Raymond T. Walters, Instructor in Drawing. 

M. Louise Van Kirk, Lecturer on Methods of Teaching and the Kin- 
dergarten. 
Thomas B. Riddington, Engineer and Instructor in Steam and Metal 

Work. 
Norman E, Whitehead, Assistant Engineer. 

Edward J. Roberts, Assistant Instructor in Hand-Loom Department. 
Alfred Burhouse, Instructor in Dry Finishing. 
Samuel Thompson, Jr., Superintendent of Building and Instructor in 

Wood-Work, 
Leonora J, C. Boeck, Registrar. 
Anna T. Joyce, Librarian. 



INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACY. 



THE Colonial Dames of Philadelphia, who voted last 
month to rebuke the evident sympathy of the French 
for our Spanish enemies, by ceasing to buy French goods, 
struck a responsive chord of patriotism and suggested a 
lesson in education and economics which will not be wholly 
lost even upon those who disapprove a boycott. At first 
Paris affected derision and complacently said: *'They 
will purchase our goods all the same ; they will have 
to. They cannot obtain such artistic creations anywhere 
else." A little later, however, the shrinkage of French 
exports and the quiet of Parisian hotels caused representa- 
tion to be made of the unswerving friendship of France for 
America and we were reminded of Lafayette and the Bon 
Homme Richard. Then spoke a Boston woman (see the 
evening Transcript^ May 27, 1898) and said: **Do fash- 
ionable folk shop in Paris from philanthropic motives ? No, 
they buy because they want the goods ; it is a purely selfish 
matter. It is the thing to go abroad ; the thing to wear 
imported gowns. Where would the patriotism be in re- 
fusing to trade there?" 

Boston has not always talked in that way, and all of 
Boston does not talk so now. For be it remembered that 
in 1767 John Hancock, who was a merchant and ship 
owner, asked the people of Boston to sign an agreement 
that they would not purchase goods imported in foreign 
vessels. Then Paul Revere, who was a mechanic, said : 



** Why purchase goods imported in any vessels, Mr. Han- 
cock, when we can produce such goods ourselves?" So 
there was a town meeting on the subject and the result was 
an agreement in which all joined, tabooing a long list of 
foreign articles which was appended thereto. 

Although relations between the colonies and the mother 
country had become somewhat strained, the motive of this 
boycott was not so much hostility or resentment as it was a 
desire to promote domestic manufactures. The founders 
of this nation saw most clearly that this object could not be 
accomplished without the co-operation of consumers. Pa- 
triotism must enter into business. It must become fashion- 
able to buy domestic goods. Gradually home manufac- 
tures improved, but foreign goods had such prestige that 
government was obliged, and has been obliged ever since, 
to discriminate against them in its laws. Thomas Jeffer- 
son, who had drawn the Declaration of Independence, de- 
clared after his sojourn in France, that experience had 
taught him that industrial independence had become as 
essential to our happiness as political independence. It is 
said that both Jefferson and Madison refused to wear for- 
eign fabrics. But they were only Presidents. They could 
not set the fashions. The fashions are set by people who 
are never followed in anything else, and would hardly be 
followed in that if their roofs were taken off. 

Although it is true, as the Boston Commercial Bulletin 
has said, that the colonial habit of admiring *« imported" 
goods belongs to a colony, not to an independent nation, 
it is also true that the fashionable world does not buy them 
because they are imported, but because they are attractive, 
and because, dating from colonial times, an opinion has 
prevailed that to be pretty they must be imported. We 
may inveigh against this as much as we please, but it is 
the beginning of wisdom to take facts as we find them. As 
a matter of fact, known to a few of our people, American 
manufactures in some lines, even of textiles, have long 



been at such a high stage of perfection that they are ex- 
celled nowhere in the world. And yet, out of regard to 
the ignorance and prejudice of the beau monde, these goods 
are regularly sold under foreign brands. The agent of the 
Pacific Mills at Lawrence told me that for the last fourteen 
years they have run eighty looms upon one kind of goods, 
all of which were taken by a New York house on con- 
dition that they were to be put up in French style and 
tagged with a French label. There are probably hundreds 
of similar instances. Here and there a manufacturer, by 
persistent advertising and by long and patient waiting, 
causes his own trade mark to be regarded as highly as a 
European brand, and may his tribe increase; but most 
manufacturers sell to meet pay-rolls and pay dividends, 
hence if they comply with the requirements of their com- 
mission houses or wholesale customers, who are the first 
distributers, they feel that they have no further interest or 
duty. Thus the most inventive people on the face of the 
globe, with a fine eye also to beauty, has been altogether 
too submissive through the foibles of fashion and the com- 
mercial spirit, to the designs and interests of alien produ- 
cers and too blind and indifferent to the artistic and indus- 
trial advancement of our own country. 

While it is not probable that French goods are to be ex- 
cluded from our markets, and while perhaps it is not desir- 
able to go further in that direction than to put them on a 
basis of fair equality as to price with American goods, by 
imposing suitable duties and by patriotically preferring our 
own when they are equally good, yet there is food for 
thought in the volume of the importations. Last year we 
wore two million dollars' worth of French gloves and five 
million dollars' worth of French silks and drank four mil- 
lion dollars' worth of French wines, although we produce 
similar goods in large quantities and can readily supply 
every demand when we can suit every taste. If home in- 
dustry were to have even no more than one half of this 



business which now goes to France, it would employ peo- 
ple enough to make a small city and in some periods it 
would make all the difference between bad times and good 
times. When our needs are supplied by imports, we have 
only the goods ; when they are supplied by home products, 
we have both the goods and the money. Without doubt 
it is the economic duty of a people possessing varied natu- 
ral resources to be so far as possible self supplying. A 
thousand residents are worth more to a nation than ten 
thousand non-residents. And a country which is strong at 
home cannot fail to be strong abroad. These are truisms 
which appeal to the interest as well as to the patriotism of 
every true American. 

But neither a patriotic purpose nor a protective tariff can 
or should content us with inferior domestic goods. One of 
the chief ends and triumphs of protection is to stimulate 
ambition, invention and high endeavor. It, more than any 
other one cause, has diversified our industries, planted fac- 
tories in the midst of farms, created home markets for every 
kind of home products, given the people employment, op- 
portunity and hope, more than doubled our population, 
more than quadrupled our wealth, and wonderfully en- 
hanced our civilization during the generation that has fol- 
lowed the civil war. Nothing more, however, must be 
expected ot protection than to afford the best opportunity. 
It does not take the place, and was never designed to take 
the place, of energy and skill. It only needs now to be 
supplemented by just such work as this Pennsylvania 
School of Industrial Art is doing. For not only have you 
hitched your chariot to a star, and harnessed the genius of 
fancy to the pinions of the loom, but you have begun to 
educate a much larger class than the students whom you 
graduate. You are teaching the American people that the 
best which can be done anywhere is done as well here. 
You have shown that the fine arts are no longer limited to 
canvas and marble, to brush and chisel, but have found 



wings that carry them into multiform fabrics, making com- 
mon-place things luminous with beauty, feasting the eyes 
and sating the longings of connoiseurs, cultivating and ele- 
vating the tastes of the plain people, and at length making 
it possible for American mechanical genius — already the 
wonder of the world — to adorn the person, spread the floor, 
hang the walls and decorate the table with beautiful crea- 
tions that were once the exclusive possession of the rich 
and some of which were not even possible to the wearisome 
processes of hand-work. Madame de Stael called archi- 
tecture frozen music. The lovely fabrics which you are 
teaching how to produce are caught fancies, glowing 
thoughts filling the meshes of a net, kaleidoscopic visions 
dancing in the sheen of things we wear, poetry singing all 
about us through the walks of daily life. 

Entrancing as all this is from an artistic point of view, 
it is also intensely practical. It opens to us new realms of 
human endeavor ; it is the sine qua non of our industrial 
supremacy. Why are the Baldwin Locomotive Works able 
to sell their machines in all countries in competition with 
the best that are produced at a lower labor cost in the coun- 
try where the locomotive was invented ? It is because they 
are never content with what has been achieved, but are 
continually going forward to improve every process and 
perfect every detail. During the last twenty years there 
has been an almost steady increase in our exports of manu- 
factures and when we analyze the returns we find that it 
is only goods which excel those of other countries which 
thus find foreign markets in considerable quantities and at 
paying prices. Locomotives, farm machinery and imple- 
ments, street cars and carriages, watches, builders' and 
saddlers' hardware, hemlock-tanned leather and refined 
mineral oils nearly exhaust the list, and the success of 
some of them is due to natural advantages. 

The only textiles for which we have found much foreign 
demand have been plain and coarse cottons. The demand 



has been chiefly in China and Japan. The English were 
ahead of us there, but as their goods, though attractive, 
were loaded with clay and ours were all honest cotton, we 
found a growing market. Before long, however, the Mon- 
golians asked themselves why they should not manufacture 
their own cotton cloths. They had long been skilled in 
the more difficult art of ceramics and their Hindoo neigh- 
bors were large exporters of cotton cloths to England and 
America a century ago. Such skill had been developed 
that in 1786 Sir Charles Wilkins carried home to England 
a piece of cotton cloth made from a yarn so fine that 115 
miles of a single thread weighed but a pound. So after 
Japan had opened her ports and taken on Western civiliza- 
tion for a few years, she began to build great cotton facto- 
ries and to equip them with the best English and American 
machines. Her operatives proved to be tractable and pa- 
tient and they soon became skilful. Women were glad to 
work twelve hours a day for from eight to twelve cents, 
and men for from fifteen to thirty cents. The companies 
which employed them were soon able to declare dividends 
of twenty to forty per cent. Nearly half a million women 
and minors were better employed than ever before and the 
cotton goods produced in 1896 were valued at $37,083,757. 
Soon China began to build cotton factories and the number 
is yearly increasing. They have been successful from the 
first. This spring the governor of Hupeh has started one 
near Hankow, with 30,000 spindles and 1000 power looms. 
It is equipped with electric lights, automatic humidifiers 
and sprinklers, it employs 2000 persons, mostly minors, 
and the goods thus far sold yield a profit of 40 per cent. 
These Oriental beginnings are like the proverbial cloud 
*' no bigger than a man's hand "which gives warning to 
navigators. They indicate that our principal foreign 
markets for cheap cottons will soon be lost. They indicate 
that even our domestic markets would soon be lost if they 
were not protected by a tariff. 



Now the obvious lesson of these facts is that we must di- 
rect our endeavors more and more into channels of the 
highest and finest production. Slipshod methods will no 
longer serve. The trades unions have disapproved and 
done away with the old apprentice system and now the 
only way in which a person can learn the several processes 
of converting fibres into cloths, and chemicals into dyes, and 
weaves into the effects which charm the eye, is to take 
the full course of a school of design and textile fabrication. 
The day is near when mills will have no others but gradu- 
ates of these schools for their superintendents and overseers, 
and next they will be preferred for agents and treasurers. 
'' Now we know in part and we see in part," but then there 
will be those who can see every part face to face. Rev. 
William J. Tilley, in his admirable book on ** Masters of 
the Situation" says that old Captain Fox used to say that in 
his opinion the midshipmen of the Naval Academy ought 
to begin as coal-heavers — at the very bottom of the ladder, 
and then work their way up. Every one knows that no 
line officer ever comes to the command of a ship ** through 
the cabin window." As a midshipman he must " learn all 
the ropes" and make himself familiar with every detail 
concerning a man of war, and learn to manage her in 
weather fair or foul. Practiced skill is ever at a premium, 
and it commands appropriate recognition. Even the old 
tars pay it fitting deference. It was noticed during the 
naval operations of the civil war that the old sailors obeyed 
with alacrity the orders of even young officers fresh from 
the academy, while they were prone to question, if not to 
resent, those of the ablest volunteer officers placed in com- 
mand. Moreover, there is the consciousness, which the 
trained officer has, of his own superior power. It was this 
knowledge and this consciousness which enabled Captain 
Clark to navigate the Oregon from San Francisco around 
Cape Horn, 13,000 miles, without delay or mishap, and 
which gave him courage to telegraph the government from 



a South American port, '* Please do not tangle me up with 
too many instructions ; I am not afraid to meet the whole 
Spanish fleet." It was this thorough training which gave 
Admiral Dewey confidence to take his squadron into Ma- 
nila bay and to silence the land batteries and sink the 
Spanish ships, thus '* decorating the Spanish government," 
as Colonel William M. Olin has facetiously said, ** with 
the unique distinction of having the largest submarine navy 
of any nation in the world." Forty years ago those two 
heroes were boys in the same Vermont village, where they 
never saw a vessel larger than a row-boat. What the 
Naval Academy did for them the Pennsylvania School of 
Industrial Art is now doing for some of the future great 
captains of industry, for young men and young women who 
are destined to load our argosies with the products of 
peace, to drive out of sight all the monstrosities of art that 
mar the homes and distort the lives of the common people, 
and to clothe the world with beauty. 

Our Spanish foes, like some of the plantation aristocracy 
before the civil war, affect to despise the mechanical spirit. 
The result shows in their wretched gunnery and in their 
helplessness when certain hired Scotch and English engin- 
neers declined to serve them against America. The me- 
chanical spirit is the genius of the age. When Eli Whitney 
introduced the principle of the duplication of parts, he 
revolutionized the arts of war and peace and multiplied the 
forces of nature that minister to the wants of man. The 
study of these forces and of their increasing adaptability, 
now more than ever before and more than anything else, dis- 
tinguishes the progressive from the decaying nation. It 
opens up vast new possibilities. It has become one of the 
learned professions. It is the triumph of mind over matter. 
Thus Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, America, can see the 
supreme importance of such an institution of learning as this. 
The money devoted to its support, which ought to be un- 
stinted, is certain to return the largest interest of any that the 
city or the state bestows. The day will come when its 



founders will be regarded as the Benjamin Franklins and 
Stephen Girards of this generation. 

Massachusetts, usually a leader, follows you in this, and 
emulates your example. Under state and local patronage, 
Lowell has within two years put into successful operation 
a textile school so large and well equipped that it lacks only 
a department of design to compare favorably with yours. 
With similar state aid New Bedford is now installing one. 
And for many years the institute of Technology at Boston 
and the Technological Institute at Worcester, together with 
departments of design in two of the art schools of Boston, 
have been turning out young men and women whose scien- 
tific attainments and cultivated tastes have made a marked 
impression upon certain New England fabrics. Some of 
them are now engrafting the ideal upon the practical by 
mastering the intricacies of textile machinery. This, if 
anything, will save to Massachusetts — handicapped by 
unfavorable natural conditions and by advanced labor laws, 
though the latter are said to be helpful by attracting the best 
operatives, — her vast cotton manufacturing industry, now 
rendered largely unprofitable and much of it imperilled by 
the increasing competition of the South. In recent years, 
as your President Search showed in great detail in his ad- 
dress before the Manufacturers' Club last September, the 
textile regions of Germany have been dotted all over with 
textile schools, none of them so complete as yours but most 
of them under state and municipal patronage and all of 
them contributing incalculably to the power of German en- 
terprise in the commercial world. With such an enlight- 
ened and aggressive and ubiquitous rival in the field, it has 
become absolutely necessary for America to employ the 
same and better methods in order to gain our share of the 
world's markets or even hold industrial supremacy at home. 
Here again are your foresight and enterprise and patience 
more than justified ; and if every loom and spindle in the 
country were to contribute a small percentage of its product 



to sustain and fill these halls of learning, the more business 
would come to it as a result. No matter how much is ex- 
pended on special education, it will prove to be the smallest 
item in the cost of manufacture and it will yield the largest 
returns. Nothing else is so costly as ignorance ; and when 
ignorance gets into a design and that design gets into a 
machine, not even logarithms can compute the economic 
waste. 

Ladies and gentlemen of the Graduating Classes, you 
and your predecessors are pioneers in a new American life. 
You have the rare opportunity of leading what I foresee 
will be a great procession. For some years you may be 
individually obscure — hidden in studios, unobserved in 
drafting rooms, immured in mills — but you will be working 
out the higher destiny of the highest branch of American 
industry. The thoughts of your intellects, schooled in 
technique and not cramped but rather expanded by it, will 
furnish employment for additional millions of capital and 
labor. You will win reputations for your employers' goods. 
You will become masters of art and captains of industry, 
and possibly some of you will lend your names to fame, to 
take places with those of Gobelin and Jacquard, Arkwright 
and Crompton, Whitney and Thimmonier. But let me ad- 
vise you that you have only just begun to learn. You have 
mastered the principles of color, combination and design 
and you can take apart and put together numerous ma- 
chines, and you know what they have thus far been made 
to do ; but there is no limit to the possibilities of discovery 
and effect. As an illustration of this, take the wonders of 
the Jacquard loom. For ninety-eight years its essential 
features have been retained but its capabilities have con- 
tinuall}'^ increased. And now it appears that Jan Szeze- 
panik, the youthful inventor of the telectroscope, has con- 
trived to make the Jacquard reproduce in textiles photo- 
graphs as well as drawn designs, and also to automatically 
puncture by electricity the metal plate that takes the place 



of cardboard. This is expected to be one of the features 
of the Paris Exposition. Its utility can only be conjectured. 
In the hands of mere mechanics it is liable to carpet the 
earth with ill-chosen pictures ; in the hands of artist-weav- 
ers it may hang the walls of palaces with gobelins of nat- 
ure's rarest scenes and adorn the cottages of peasants with 
reflections from the face of God. 

Whatever may be discovered, you are trained to apply 
it with refined and cultivated sense. Many who have not 
enjoyed your advantages can become mere imitators and 
operatives ; be it your part to blend the fine arts and the 
mechanic arts as the soul and body are blended, making 
both increasingly useful, and delighting the world with new 
revelations of nature beaming through the works of man. 
Fashion soon ceases to patronize imitation. The difference 
between success and failure may sometimes lie in the closer 
or looser twisting of a cord or the variation of a shade, but 
the difference will give a new effect and make a fortune. 
The means are mechanical, but the motive must be an in- 
ventive and instructed taste. Such a taste alone can make 
the multiform combinations that give richness and refine- 
ment to the result. The imitator may discover a part of 
the means but he fails to produce the effect. Phillips 
Brooks related that a friend of his, who aspired to oratory, 
went with him to hear a great orator speak. And when 
they came away his friend inquired, *« Did you see where 
his power lay?" ** I felt," replied the great pulpit orator, 
** unable to analyze and epitomize in an instant such a com- 
plex result, and meekly I said **No, did you?" **Yes," 
he replied briskly, ** I watched him, and it is in the double 
motion of his hand. When he wanted to solemnize and 
calm and subdue us, he turned the palm of his hand down ; 
when he wanted to elevate and inspire us he turned the 
palm of his hand up. That was it." And that was all the 
man had seen in an eloquent speech. He was no fool, but 
he was an imitator. He was looking for a single secret 

13 



for a multifarious effect. I suppose he has gone on from 
that day to this, turning his hand upside down and down- 
side up, and wondering that nobody is either solemnized 
or inspired. 

While your training has given you knowledge of intri- 
cate processes, it has warned and armed you against ser- 
vile dependence upon them. They will be your servants 
and not your masters. Wagner, writing of his studies 
under Weinlig, said : ** He dismissed me after having con- 
ducted me so far that I could solve the most difficult exer- 
cises in counterpoint with ease. *That which you have 
gained through this dry study is called indej>endence^^ he 
said to me." And independence, it seems to me, is the 
crowning glory of all education and all industrial success. 
It stands upon what has been and reaches to what may be. 
Independence, which presupposes superior knowledge, is 
the first essential to the play of genius. Twice fortunate 
the city where stands the hall whence emanated that im- 
mortal Declaration that '* these United Colonies are and of 
right ought to be free and independent States," and where, 
after the lapse of more than a century, has been reared a 
great institution which teaches the artistic and industrial 
independence without which political independence would 
sometime come to be of little worth. 

The mastery which you have reached has not been at- 
tained without labor. Rest and change may come to you, 
but there cannot safely be a cessation of labor. Those 
departments of art and physics in which you revel contain 
never-ending incentives to research and progress. You 
are bound to be inspired with an undying ambition to 
evolve something, and like the Djdng Alchemyst your 
prayer will be, 

" Break for me but one seal that is unbroken ! 
Speak for me but one word that is unspoken ! " 

Half educated men of native ability too often trust to the 
inspiration of occasion or to what they fancy is their genius ; 



but your education must have led you to believe, with Edi- 
son, that ** success is composed of two per cent of genius 
and ninety-eight per cent of industry," and that ** inspira- 
tion is perspiration." When Senator Morrill asked Daniel 
Webster if those fine expressions in his orations, like that 
about the British drum beat and that about Liberty and 
Union were inspirations of the moment or the results of 
careful preparation, America's most majestic orator replied, 
** I am not one of those geniuses ; I produce nothing with- 
out labor." How valuable is this lesson to all our youth, 
and especially to you, who will have occasional tempta- 
tions to rest upon your laurels. We can never get beyond 
the old truth that where much is given much is required. 
America expects of you the conquest of her markets. She 
expects of you to make it *'the thing" for fashion to cease 
to look to Paris to please aesthetic tastes, or, greater 
still, that while it may look in Paris it will buy at home. 
America expects you not only to absorb but to originate, 
and to achieve results that will command the plaudits and 
the patronage of the world. Philadelphia is the greatest 
center of our textile industries. It was in Philadelphia that 
Benjamin Franklin '* brought down the lightning from the 
clouds and rendered it subservient to the will of man." 
May Philadelphia go on from conquering to conquer, until 
this noble institution of a new and useful learning shall be 
everywhere recognized as the brightest jewel in her crown 
of glory, gleaming like a searchlight upon every studio, 
mill and mart, ever breaking forth in new revelations of 
truth and beauty, and affording the highest security to our 
industrial supremacy. 



IS 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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